This Dish is More than 1000 Years Old and Still Loved

Hello and welcome, today I'm going to put you onto a dish that Middle Easterners have been cooking for a thousand years that solves all their kitchen problems. This lentil and rice dish called Majadara is the Swiss army knife of recipes. Whether you need something cheap, packed with flavour, high protein, vegan, full of fibre or you just want a one pot recipe, this versatile dish does it all. And not only is it a top tier dish in its own right, when you combine it with all the optional extras it'll make, it's a masterclass in layering flavour. To make this Majadara masterpiece, you'll follow this simple 3 step process. 1. Build flavour by making the ultimate crispy fried onions. 2. Cook the lentils and rice to a perfect fluffy texture. And 3. Assemble an array of fantastic toppings that add even more flavours and textures. Then you build a personalised plate with your favourite elements to make the ultimate Majadara. Let's begin. Start with a few large onions, which you'll turn into crispy bites of sweet oniony goodness. These are super hard to resist. Slice the onions into strips about 3mm wide. You can do 2, 3 or 4 onions, but the more the better. Scrunch the slices in your hands to separate all the layers. You'll be left with a ton of strips, but they'll shrink a ton when cooking so don't worry if it feels like too much. Grab a 3 litre or larger pot with a lid and place it on the stove. Add all of the onions to the pot and then you need 250ml of extra virgin olive oil or vegetable oil. Don't worry, the oil won't go to waste. Pour it in then turn the heat to high and let the pot heat up. When you hear it frying, take a wooden spoon and gently fold the onions into the pot so they all get coated in oil. They'll quickly soften and shrink down and they need to fry for 15-20 minutes. Stir the pot every 10-15 seconds so they evenly brown, but other than that, this is the hardest part of the whole dish. Once they get to this jammy soft texture, watch them carefully as they'll quickly develop colour. When they turn golden like this, pull them out of the pot quickly, preferably without making a mess and lay them on a tray lined with a wire rack. The rack will help crisp up the onions by circulating air as they cool and don't worry if they fall through the gaps. Using a couple of forks, immediately spread the onions out in a single layer to air dry, then sprinkle over a pinch of salt and transfer any fallen onions back onto the rack. Now just let them cool until they're firmed up and gone crisp. I am thoroughly in love with these. It's hard not to be blown away by how great they taste. Just don't polish them off right now as you'll need them in a few minutes. As for the olive oil in the pot, it's going to be infused with a deep and sweet onion flavour. Pour it into a container and you'll use some of it in the rice and you can also use it in any dish you're cooking to add an onion infusion. And you don't need to clean out the pot, we'll just use it with anything that's left in there. Now we get to the core of the recipe and that is making perfectly fluffy lentils and rice. For that you need 275 grams of green lentils which are the ones with the greenish brown colour. Unlike red lentils, these keep their shape when cooked. Add them to a bowl and pour over some room temperature water. Then shake them around to give them a quick wash and get rid of any lentil dust. Pour them into a sieve and run them under the tap for a few seconds. Back over to the stove and add the washed lentils into the same pot. Add in one teaspoon of ground cumin and this will season the lentils but it's also supposed to make them easier to digest and produce less farts. Now pour in 700 millilitres of room temperature water and turn the heat to high. Cover the pot with a lid and when it starts boiling, turn the heat to medium high and set a timer for 8 minutes. As the lentils cook, you can prep the rice. I like Mujadara with regular basmati rice but some people prefer it with medium grain cow rose rice. The choice is up to you. You'll need 200 grams of rice which you need to wash to get rid of the excess starch. Because lentils contain starch, Mujadara easily becomes clumpy. So for fluffy Mujadara, the rice has to be washed at least three times but preferably washed until the water remains clear. Drain the rice in a sieve and set it aside. When the timer goes off, the lentils will have doubled in size. It's now time to add the rice to the lentils. Then grab a couple of handfuls of the fried onions and add those as well. Pour in two tablespoons of the onion infused oil from earlier and season with one and a half teaspoons of salt and one teaspoon of black pepper. Mix that together briefly until well combined then level out the pot. Before leaving this to cook, top up the water if needed. You want the water level to be as high as the surface of the rice and so add a quarter cup at a time until it is. Turn the heat to high and cover the pot once more. Then set a timer for two minutes. When this goes off and the water is no longer visible above the rice, turn the heat to low and cover the pot again. Steam this for about 20 minutes. That's the perfect amount of time to put together toppings and trust me, they're so worth it. The base Mujadara is just the rice with lentils and fried onions but the different toppings I'll show you add freshness, heat and textures that'll take it from a 9 out of 10 to a 20 out of 10. First up is a good old Arabic salad or Salata Baladi. Top and tail two Persian cucumbers then slice into quarters. Chop those into chunky slices and add them to a bowl. Next, you need a couple of plum tomatoes. The deepest red ones you can find will have more flavour. Dice these and add them to the bowl too. Next, three spring onions or a quarter of a white onion. Slice the white and light green part like this and add those. Next, freshly squeeze in the juice of a lemon or two depending upon how acidic you like your salad. Then give it a good glug or two of extra virgin olive oil. You can use the onion one again if you want. To season, give it about 10 cranks of salt or about half a teaspoon and about the same amount of freshly cracked black pepper. Toss it together thoroughly to combine then taste it. I needed a little more lemon and then you just let the salad sit and melt together. The liquid that comes out of it as it wilts is going to add some great moisture and fresh flavours to the Mujadara. If you think that's good, you'll love this unique spicy garlic and chili salad from Gaza called Salata Ghazewi. It packs a kick of heat and loads of flavour and my god, it is amazing. This is one of the best fresh chili sauces I've ever had and yet right now, the culture and cuisine of Gaza is actively being erased. It is now 67 days since the assault on the people of Gaza began. 60% of the buildings in the entire strip have been destroyed. 1.8 million people have been forced out of their homes. Over 18,000 civilians have been killed including 7,000 children and now millions are being starved. How is it that in 2023, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights does not apply to Palestinians? Anti-Arab hate has been growing for decades and now we're publicly told we are less worthy of life and to deal with it. No one should be denied the right to a peaceful life and no one should experience the anguish that the people of Gaza do. This channel's mission is about humanising the people of the Middle East. We teach you edible culture so you can experience their finest moments. As you do that, reflect on what their worst moments mean and how you can help them. I'll leave links for donations in the description box but the best thing you can do is give your voice. Speak to your politicians and reach out to your friends. When we're told we're unworthy of life, let us know and be the voice that says otherwise. To make Salat al-Ghazawi, you'll need a pestle and mortar or you can pulse it in a food processor. The special ingredient that makes this unique is dill which provides a herby grassy undertone. Take 10 grams of dill and peel the leaves from the stems which will leave you with just 5 grams of leaves. You'll then need 2 green chillies of a heat level that you can handle. I'm using one really hot and one medium hot. Roughly chop them and don't worry about the seeds and core. You'll also need 2 cloves of garlic. Then the last thing is a large plum tomato. Cut this into nice large cubes. To the mortar, add the dill and crush it until it breaks apart. Add the green chillies and garlic cloves as well as 1 teaspoon of salt. Crush those together gently at first then work it into a chunky paste. When that's broken down, add the chunks of tomato and lightly crush them until they're deformed. Once it looks like a chunky salsa, pour in 2 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice and 1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil. Muddle those together and you'll now have what I am deeming to be Ghazan salsa. Word of warning, this is as good as it is spicy. I loved it and I finished this whole thing in one sitting but if your tolerance is low, try it with some low heat chillies first. And to balance out the heat of the salsa, you definitely want to make this last topping. We call it Salata Zabedi, others call it Jajik or Jajiki but it's basically a yogurt cucumber dip. Take half a small cucumber or about 60 grams and dice that into small cubes. Add those to a bowl then grate or mince in 1 clove of garlic. Add half a teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of dried mint then mix it together. It'll be very thick. Now add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and mix that in. It's going to loosen up the consistency but you can add even more water to get it thinner. Add about 2 tablespoons and this is what I'd call perfect. This is one of the most common toppings to serve alongside Mujadara and if you haven't tried yogurt with rice before, you're in for a massive treat. Right about now, the Mujadara should be done. So remove the lid and use a fork to fluff it up. As you can see, the lentils are cooked perfectly and the rice is as fluffy as it can be. Now you get to assemble a custom plate with all the toppings you like. For my plate, I did a large pile of the Mujadara then topped that with a good amount of the spicy Ghazan salad. I also put some Arabic salad and yogurt then topped the Mujadara with a good amount of crispy onions. Each forkful is going to be layered with so many different flavours and textures. The yogurt will offset the heat of the chilies and the salad will add some freshness to the earthiness of the lentils. This is a perfect plate. Oh that is so good. That dish has everything you need. You've got carbs from the rice, protein from the lentils, you've got a spicy Ghazan salad which just kicks things up a bit, cucumber yogurt sauce to bring things back down and a nice salad to just round everything out. You need to try this. This is a must-try dish. I promise you're going to love this.